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Friday, January 28, 2011

The Broken Economy

Dr. Zero: Throughout the long and stagnant years of his presidency, Barack Obama has never missed an opportunity to congratulate himself for doing a swell job of managing the economy.  He did it again during the State of the Union address, proudly boasting of having “broken the back of the recession.”  Meanwhile, the recession was dragging its hyper-alloy combat endoskeleton up behind him, its red camera eyes fixed with merciless intensity on the jobs it came to terminate, reaching for our throats with its bloodstained metal talons.

The Liquidating Hedge Fund That Blew Up The Gold Market

Comments and links at Zero Hedge.

Friday stuff

NASA Marks 25th Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster

I remember my kids were in elementary school, watching the launch live when this happened.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Great Misallocators: What Obama and General Electric have in common

WSJ.

Dennis Kucinich files lawsuit over olive pit

Presented without comment.

Lawmakers Seek to End Distracted Walking

I guess they're running out of things to regulate.

A State Insult with Chinese Characteristics, Unnoticed by Obama

I've been reading about this for the last few days, although there's been nothing in the MSM.

American.com: "Although Americans are often tone-deaf to cadences of symbolism in international relations, the Chinese are not. And for Chinese audiences, the symbolism of performing “My Motherland” to a host of uncomprehending barbarians in the White House itself hardly required explanation."

ObamaCare waivers jump from 222 to 729

At HotAir:

"This ever-expanding list of waivers is the direct result of ObamaCare raising the annual benefit caps on certain health plans. Obviously, a plan with higher annual limits is potentially more costly than one without them. The money to cover the difference in premiums has to come from somewhere. Without the waivers, it will come from the employer who are forced by law to upgrade to the more expensive plan. In other words, the 729 organizations who have received waivers are not seeking refuge from an unintended consequence, but from the costs associated with one of ObamaCare’s features. The real question is what these businesses will do once the waiver program comes to an end."

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Climate change hero: Genghis Kahn

Mother Nature Network: "Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests."

Not sure why they left out Stalin and Mao.